1/1/1999 G.g.Ashbrook
Gill sat on the bench picking his wee, though by strict definitions he didn’t have one, so outs and heads-off to literalism. He, when his back pressed up against the backing of the bench was made from steel rods it was most uncomfortable, saw Sester, Mundblings’ Step Mistress, wheeling a barrel of fish heads dipped in epoxy as scented paper-weights across the street and toward him out from the hardware store another failed sale it had been a long time since someone fell off a building, spring time. As Mable Sester went by she pulled out a little bell and rang it in his face. It might as well have been a wrung wash cloth for all the calm it cramped his clay, as if he couldn’t see her bitter manic face mumbling secret charms of victim-hood and celibacy of linguistic communications, until when she passed by the little boy ring ring, smile; take this boy’s mind, take what he sees, ‘If I can fool him I will sit in his imagination, carve out a pot hole and set sail for the new world when the rain comes.’ But should their be traffic in roads, diatoms, the gracious Marty Aunt Clepter -grocery bags full of that stuff you can smell the alchemy to churn your appetitions greatly; eastern curries, breads, sauces, and there are some river systems in her brows, and some marching build up civilizations when she smiles, up those rivers, up those obelisks and cathedrals, up the organs, symphonies. But for that fulcrum on the rockers edge, for when a fishing net pop doubles as to a tool to dredge, and when a word can hone the mind to the sharpest edge, but past that the mind corrodes from some taboo reaction, disintegration. And a spin: needs, sleeps, plants, social efficacious, taboos, legalities, truths, apathys, positive apathys, negative apathys; half way through and it is dredge or sea bass, the basket can is a seaman’s spinach press, she trucks up the stairs under the heavy with out offered help; back to negativity’s ‘too much,’ but that is tied to ‘not enough’ propelling in justification, not that that is supposed to lead to anything profound, an omelet, when proper and with the blend of cheeses which the mind does not allow the body, the omelet is much more feasible, then sense sat on a buttered cod. You can speak nothing, all day if you wish; even if you are trying hard to ‘something,’ all yet professing ‘nothing,’ when if nothing arises from the kitchen all are hungry. Yet those same people, while feasting on a kitchen something will gorge themselves on a feast of utter nothing, and complain of hunger at another persons something. Oh the intellect has never been fun, for most, and has never been acceptable, if legitimate; and yet would a little thoughtfulness hurt? To do away with double standards, with layers of meta-protection, paranoid parasitic affection? We are not dancing anymore we are just spinning, contemplating our next move, a kick, or death, as if that could save us from responsibility. Drip. Oh it comes from everywhere. There are drips in houses which are older than the houses themselves. Drips that can only be heard from the street by people outside walking by at night. Plans were drawn up by Mr. Grayfer and Tom Knockston, to harness a new kind of clock to the drip. But once the house was built they could not locate it. People would complain to them about the noise of their construction, since the house had amplified the drip for all around -but non-within. And the men would sunken sit on half finished chairs, the neighbors shouting at the top of their lungs to stop ‘that racket,’ the builders in complete silence, straining to hear anything. One, Tom I believe, drafted a letter to be sent out in form to all the local residents to ask them about the drip, but in page after page he did not know how to ask, since they did not know it was a drip. If asked non had ever heard; the lunacy, the looks returned, the threats. One man thought it was a plan to steal his young bride from him, and The Man
threatened to kill Tom over it. Eventually they had to leave town. Some things are secrets for reasons just the same. But then of course by some indirect effect, the initial failure seeds something as indispensable as it is unrecognizably linked to its foundation. "Clobe rods."
But not just the first two people who walked by, a tip clink off a tin can in dry dust simulating a drop by memory like smell tone. A sign in the window. People like fly paper for experience, collecting across time, through lineage and through stories and pictures. Through old dreams, various rusts afflicting personality crops. All people he could see were vast accumulations, staggering layerings, and the home to people like themselves and unlike themselves living in the dust of an untended garden of imagination. The space was there, but the halls were empty. For a few moments a day, a few memorable thoughts a year, and the bodies and mouths and thoughts running like pin-balls with no where to go. Ever seeking a rearrangement of events which would create a new place, but that place would be water. Water-mills; the flash floods of the Midwest hook junkie share croppers debted to dead soil to seeds of miraculous promise and no possibility of actualization. There is a moment of moisture with a flash flood which no sizable organism can appreciate. Between the dust and the torrent that carves the dust and drowns and suffocates, there is a clap of difference, which, as it is tied to all difference, has the smile to bare a child and teach and trick and whistle a toon by a twisted crick, and a meal to the famished, and relief to the tortured, and every click makes some loud thought which echoes in the thoughts we like to think are our own. We keep house for a thousand angry house keepers wandering the same things, running from the same things, and where is that water? What click can we learn to teach fancy to flesh? Pour the foundations, thatched roof, some bitter woman pissing off the mason leaves a stain on the house. See-saw, ping-pong, tennis, a game a catch, a conversation slipping in and out of word shrouds over centuries, poking its head out through smiles and flirtation which never cared for hope in a brain-bashed realism, pathological but heavy handed. And what did that Mason do, pissed off building the house, we can all forget in different ways, some cause bruises, some cause a risky mystery and then one or two times the confusion later down the line; how many times can you be confused to forget for help on the farm and extra income. Where is that water? Get a thousand farmers to sit and watch the sky, mouths dry, that is a single question until the water comes; until they forget that wasn’t what they were really waiting for.
Gill lit up, and swept his halls and played his vibrations and tried to be a good host. Tried to keep the chef from running off with the pantry girls before, can’t say, gets their dinner. But what is it? He thinks. Some things are so easy to forget. "What was I thinking?" Or… fly paper, switch back on the electric magnet, turn on gravity and watch them cuss and pull eachother’s hair out. "There was some loud clicking noise in the back room on Wednesday." Can’t remember now. Cucumbers, did it have something to do with cucumbers? One-way mirrors. Someone’s elbow turned off the inter-com mid-conversation, a room of mirrors, catacombs of rooms of mirrors, change the light and it becomes people separated by thin transparencies, knock of the elbow and the sound goes off. Quiet. Do you remember? Do you remember what you were trying to forget? Do you play fork tongue in bars for duces? Head in a vice. Twist off the head, relax and release. "Someday that tree out back will stay rooted. Keeps blowing over but never dies, just pops out. Every time it happ’n’s though, them roots get trickier. Some day be so that no amount of wind take that down the corner store will you, need change. Uh, get some bread too, and egg salad. Thanks."
Brillo pads. Daughters. Gill wondered, wandered how many planets she have in her face? Always good to stop for smoke C from time to time.
He tipped at the ash with his finger nail to make sure there was nothing left, and he tapped it out onto the ground. It fell like a little black dust or a few crumbs of burnt cinnamon toast. He picked up his bag and started down the sidewalk again for home. Oh he had egg salad, oh he had bread.